Despite a
predictable climactic sequence involving an important championship game and
countless scenes discussing basketball, Wolves
is hardly a sports movie. While it may rely on many of the clichés found in the
sports genre, even including Herculean efforts to overcome injury in order to
save the team from defeat, Wolves is
far more preoccupied with Oedipal melodrama than the action occurring on the
court. The title of the film says it all, because even though ‘Wolves’ is the
name of the high school basketball team at the center of the film, far more of
the film is spent dwelling on the predatory behavior of those surrounding the
star player.

That star player
is Anthony Keller (Taylor John Smith), whose skills and chances at attending
his dream university
of Cornell are likely
thanks to the harsh parenting style of his father, Lee Keller (Michael
Shannon). At the same time, Lee’s petty jealousy and weak character threatens
to destroy the same opportunities that he helped build for his son. Constantly
flexing his muscles to prove dominance over his son, Lee resembles the father
from The Great Santini, only with
more vices. He has a drinking problem which is only surpassed by his gambling
addiction, and has the bad habit of taking out his frustration as a failing
writer and mediocre college professor on his son with unexpected outbursts of
violence, usually under the guise of tough love.

Lee is such a
tornado of raw emotions and character flaws, the film often feels as though it
should belong to him rather than the son whose defining characteristic he
describes as “silence.” Anthony feels much more like a pawn in the narrative
than a strong character, despite writer/director (and husband to star Julianne
Moore) Bart Freundlich’s efforts to give him more to do by adding in
unnecessary subplots such as an accidental teen pregnancy, a bullying teammate,
and a fleeting friendship with a local street ball player (John Douglas
Thompson) who loves to wax poetically. Anthony is even the catalyst for his
mother (Carla Gugino) realizing the failings of her husband, though only after
watching him abuse her son for a majority of the film.

It would be far
easier to dismiss Wolves as contrived
melodrama undeserving of praise if it weren’t for the commitment of the cast
that Freundlich is able to get in crucial roles. At the same time, Shannon and
Gugino are so good as the parents battling over the future of their son that it
often dwarfs the actor in the underdeveloped lead role. When Anthony is finally
given the opportunity for action in the final basketball scene, it is done with
the most contrived of all sports clichés, and in a way that inexplicably makes
his motivations unclear. As a sports film, Wolves
is underwhelming. As a family drama, it survives a contrived screenplay only
due to the massive talent of the two actors Freundlich was lucky enough to
cast.